‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Is a Moral Stain

Kristi Noem said it will be used to “lock up some of the worst scumbags”—but its inmates haven’t been convicted of violating any laws.

(Composite / Photos: Shutterstock / screenshot via official DHS account on X)

YOU MAY HAVE SEEN THE PICTURE ABOVE: It’s an AI-generated image of four alligators standing next to each other just outside a fence topped with razor wire, behind which is a prison lookout tower. Each of the alligators is wearing a black cap on which “ICE” is written in large white letters. Posted by the official X account of the Department of Homeland Security in late June, the picture was apparently intended as a humorous reference to the newly erected federal detention facility in the Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” There is nothing humorous about it.

The facility was built at an old aviation-training facility inside the Big Cypress National Preserve in Ochopee, Florida. With a current capacity of 3,000 people, the facility is designed to become the largest migrant-detention facility in the United States. DHS plans to make it even larger, although last Thursday a federal judge placed a two-week hold on additional construction. The pause is intended to give the judge time to decide if the facility might unduly harm not the human beings detained within its walls, but the flora and fauna in the area.

Indeed, cruelty to inmates seems to be part of the point. As Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem described it, “Alligator Alcatraz, and other facilities like it, will give us the capability to lock up some of the worst scumbags who entered our country under the previous administration.”

Secretary Noem has not told us how one identifies a “scumbag” or what criteria are used to determine that they warrant that label. Nor is it clear what process will be used to determine whether they are permitted to stay in the United States or will, at some point, be deported. It is clear, though, that incarceration in a central facility is designed to make the deportation process work faster.

The facility—which visitors have described as “vile,” “inhumane,” and “gross”—contains a series of tented structures. Inside each is a wire cage designed to hold thirty-two people. According to an account provided by Democratic members of Congress who toured the facility last month, the lights in the tents are never turned off, interred individuals are not allowed to shower, there is no privacy, and each caged group of thirty-two is allotted three toilets. All the toilets are open and visible to all members of the group. They reportedly do not flush, fill with worms, spill onto the floor, and gather mosquitos and other insects. The drinking water comes from a little spigot on top of the toilets.

We now have and always have had prisons and jails that imposed, and were designed to impose, severe strictures on inmates. Alcatraz—the real Alcatraz—was one. Located in the middle of San Francisco Bay, it was naturally isolated. The cells that confined inmates from fourteen to sixteen hours every day were very small, damp, and cold. Visitations and talk between inmates were severely restricted. There were no recreational programs and even reading materials were restricted to narrowly defined limits.

Alcatraz was shuttered in 1963. The modern version is ADX Florence. Located in the Rocky Mountains near Denver, it is the highest-security prison in the United States. Inmates live in 7-foot-by-12-foot cells of poured concrete 23 hours per day. All components of the cell, except for a stainless-steel tub, are also made of poured concrete. Prisoners receive their meals through a slot in the cell door. Their only glimpse of the outside world is through a narrow window that allows them to look at the sky.

There is no doubt that the conditions of confinement in Alcatraz and ADX Florence were and are harsh, but the people incarcerated in those facilities committed serious crimes and had been convicted of those crimes after trials before juries of their peers—and in many cases, after appeals. The conditions under which they were incarcerated were designed to ensure that they would never again engage in similar behavior.

By contrast, incarceration in the brutal confines of the Florida facility comes before decisions are made about whether the inmates have violated any laws other than illegal entry into the United States. Illegal entry subjects them to deportation; it does not subject them to long-term imprisonment.

What the Everglades detention facility does, and what it is apparently intended to do, is dehumanize every individual forced into it. When a cabinet secretary, the head of a major government department charged with making decisions that can affect every citizen of the United States, calls current and future detainees “scumbags,” she creates a dehumanizing force that inevitably ripples through her entire organization.

Putting people in cages and removing all vestiges of privacy dehumanizes them again. The existence of and conditions of confinement at the Everglades facility are a national disgrace. It should be closed immediately.